About thinking, speaking and understanding

Language carries our individuality, our biography. It shapes and reflects us and our experiences, beliefs and imprints. It can even fill the quiet moments, as we talk to no one more than ourselves. Speaking and thinking enable reflection and understanding. The importance of language for us as humans, as a species and as individuals is therefore incomparable: we use it to ask questions and solve problems, to express ourselves and create understanding, to comprehend ourselves and others and even to trigger emotions, sensations and feelings.

Finding the right words - a challenge

Etymologically, the word "emotion" comes from the Latin "emovere", which means "to move out, to set in motion". This is exactly what language can do. Words are able to convey feelings and bring concepts and ideas to life. Language triggers something, moves us and even manages to make the individual, subjective human experience not only comprehensible, but also tangible and experienceable. A poem, a story or a song lyric can describe a feeling so aptly that you feel it immediately. It is an overwhelming and unifying experience to feel and share your own emotions through the words of another.

Similarly, the precise, comprehensible description of a concept or theory can open up a whole new world. The right words are able to break down the boundaries of one's own world, to think and feel more deeply into it.

A current example is gender language. Only the linguistic confrontation with the concept of gender as a spectrum, without wanting to judge it, makes it possible to engage with the concept intellectually. And it enables us all to deal with the reality of life of all those who do not feel and/or cannot be defined as "male" or "female". Language creates and reflects reality.

For the scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt, language was the "formative, organizing organ of thought", while the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein noted its individual and at the same time universal significance for the boundaries of the world. But how do you find the "right words"?

Formal criteria create new insights

At the end of the 20th century, a formal-quantitative approach to language analysis was developed. According to this approach, people with different imprints and behavioral tendencies also use language differently, both formally and structurally. Based on this approach, the idea of a scientific measurability of language in terms of its effect was ultimately developed. As part of the largest scientific study of its kind, language, psychology and AI were combined to create Emotion Analytics, an AI solution that analyzes language based on formal criteria and makes its effect measurable. The human experience of language, the psychology, indeed the emotionality in language, becomes visible and can therefore be reflected upon and ultimately changed.

So if, as part of a large-scale transformation process, a CEO asks himself whether his own communication is appropriately optimistic, visionary and action-oriented - because it should be - it is now possible to determine the impact of communication with Speech Impact and change it if necessary. Of course, VIER Speech Impact can also measure which customer approach is particularly successful for which group of people, whether and how the desired brand values are lived and communicated and which communication profiles make up a successful team. Speech Impact provides concrete indications as to which of the changeable parameters in language can be trained and how, thus enabling an individual development perspective. It triggers a targeted process of reflection and change in thinking, speaking and writing. This can break down old patterns of behavior and impact and lead to greater satisfaction, understanding and success - on both sides!